Energy Independence...NOW?

This information could get you boiling mad!

Have you heard about the process of converting coal to oil – then to synthetic gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and so on? Fuels made this way are far cleaner than normally processed gasoline and diesel fuel. The process has been known for decades to the Federal Government and the oil companies.

Why hasn’t this home-grown fuel source been utilized to make us energy-independent? Well, three answers: One, the magic number to make this process worthwhile is $35 per barrel of domestic or imported oil (the coal-to-oil process costs about $35 a barrel to produce and distribute). So as long as oil stayed below $35/barrel, there was no reason for anybody to invest in the coal-to-oil production. But now that oil is far above $35 a barrel, it makes perfect sense to tap this American fuel reserve. Two, oil companies are enjoying huge profits from the low supply and high demand for their oil products, so they’re reluctant to change that. After all, with the coal-to-oil process, gasoline would go back down to $1.39 a gallon or less and their actual net profit would go down, correspondingly. Three, environmentalists have blocked new coal mining operations, and will continue to block the development of this fuel resource, just as they have fought against new oil exploration.

This coal-to-oil idea is not new; the Germans used it during WWII to fuel their war machines. We acquired the knowledge when the German scientists came to the USA to work on the space program, after the war. Today, the state of Montana is in the process of building their first coal-to-oil plant to be operational in two years. Using Montana as a model, other plants could be built by governments in coal-rich states.

Questions: Once oil jumped above the magic $35 a barrel cost, why didn’t the Fed come down hard on the oil industry to move to this process, in addition to domestic oil drilling and production? Or why didn’t the Fed start helping coal-rich states build processing plants they it new could produce cheaper fuels, immediately? This alternative to imported oil, or more drilling for oil, is right here right now in our own country! Why is nothing being done…except in Montana? Where is the mainstream media on this – shouldn’t this be front page news all over the media? Shouldn’t the media be in the face of oil company executives, the US Department of Energy, the Pentagon? Are the tree-huggers so powerful that we can't shut them up in order to become energy-independent in the next 5 years?

Oh yeah, one more factoid to explode your brain: U.S. coal reserves are equivalent to four times the oil of Saudi Arabia, 1.3 times the oil of OPEC and equal to all the world's proved oil reserves.